An outward sign of the name change at the federal consumer financial protection agency has literally come to pass – with a new emblem emblazoned on the agency’s headquarters.
Monday, a sign using the acronym of new name of the agency – Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP – formerly known, and widely signed as, the CFPB) appeared in the lobby of the bureau’s headquarters building.
The sign change is more than cosmetic: since he was named acting director in November by President Trump, Mick Mulvaney has stressed that the agency will hew closely to its statutory charge, and description.
To that end, Mulvaney changed the syntax of the bureau’s name to reflect how it is referred to in the legislation that established it, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank). That legislation refers to the agency as “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.”
He announced that change in April in remarks to a conference of the American Bankers Association (ABA) in Washington. The agency had been known as CFPB since its inception eight years ago.
In making the announcement, Acting Director Mick Mulvaney read the statutory language from the Dodd-Frank statute, to the applause of the audience of bankers.
“It’s really disconcerting I received applause for actually reading legislation,” Mulvaney said then.
In making the change to the agency’s acronym, Mulvaney indicated he was only following the law. “That is what the law says,” Mulvaney noted; he also said the first thing he did when he was named acting director of the agency in November was to “read the law” creating the bureau.